One People, One Voice, One Zion

The largest organisation representing British Jews has begun an investigation into the thirty-six signatories of an open letter in the Financial Times which voiced some fairly muted criticisms about the current phase of the crusade against the Palestinian Untermenschen. The objections were carefully couched, proclaiming the conduct of the Netanyahoo régime not so much bad in itself as tending to risk a diminution of the moral awe and reverence in which Zionism and the Righteous State are properly held. Yet even this circumspect approach ("might the Revolution perhaps be better served if you received sincere applause from a non-terrified party conference, Comrade Stalin?") was too fanatically deviationist for the Board of Deputies, which issued a statement denouncing the letter and convened its executive committee for a unanimous vote of impeachment, on the technical grounds that the signatories had illegitimately pretended to represent the views of the entire Board. In a move that would do credit to Team Starmer and many another rightist among the nations, the Board's chief executive fulminated in the pages of a newspaper that carrying legitimate debate into the pages of a newspaper is a short-sighted and dangerous precedent, apparently because it tends to imply that a debate is taking place despite the single and settled position of the even more legitimate community as a whole.